Secular Witch

(To clarify, I do understand the use of First Person accounts, I just don’t think they’d hold up from the perspective of traditional science, which is what I’m focused on at the moment. I fully understand that something doesn’t need to have backing under traditional science to be useful, but I think that if something along these lines *could* be proven, science would heavily benefit, as there would be so many things to study and so many traditionally accepted ideas in science that would need to be re-examined.)

So, in my view, if a spell is to be generally successful/‘real,’ the ideal results of the spell would be more likely to occur with the spell as opposed to if the spell didn’t happen. So, let’s say there’s a 20% chance of something happening, and I did a spell with the intent of the thing happening. If we could prove that the spell causes those odds to be above 20%, then that’d prove it worked, from my view.

So really all we’d need is a large sample size? All the issues you mention seem like they’d primarily be an issue with a small sample size.

I suppose the key here is that assuming there are spells that can be cast that make it more likely for things to happen, due to forces outside of what is understood as real in traditional science, then that means

1) there are forces outside of what is understood as real by science

2) these forces act upon our observable reality in observable ways

3) these ways can be predicted to some extent, with accuracy higher than random chance

If these are true, then it must be possible to make a scientific experiment that finds *something*. It wouldn’t necessarily prove the specifics of the spell work, but it’d prove that something absolutely wild is going on! Which would lead to further study and probably a complete reshaping of our (scientific) understanding of the world around us

So basically just. am i missing something here?

I think maybe I wasn't clear, even in larger sample sizes with 1K+ or 10k+ or 100K+ we would need to account for the individual in order to track and consider different kinds of ways that the spell caster, themselves, are impacting the spell itself because of the reasons that I listed in the previous response. There's a lot of things that go into spellwork as a core component of the structure of spells. Not everything is a motion based economy, again as I mentioned in the previous post. So even if you select the "most perfect spell" to test on, right? That doesn't mean you're covering the bases for all of spells, and would essentially need to spend the time finding that larger sample size (right?) of people willing to do many different kinds of spells. And some spells are closed. Some spells have religious obligations. And i just don't think you'd be finding people willing to test that either as a volunteer or as a scientist because there's a key separation on testing religions or spiritualities, or beliefs. Right?

I also touched a bit on the observability and the success of things, right? But you bring up the other side of "20% better than what we know" - which is hard to predict when it comes to conditions for spellwork. Let's say we do a protection spell at 1K folks, it's a simple - actually - better example. Let's say we do a money spell at 1K folks, it's simple motion as the cobblah spell. And it's for 200 dollars.

As I mentioned in the previous post - what are we measuring 200 dollars? Are we measuring it in a single lump sum? Are we measuring it from let's say people get points on their credit cards that equate to 200. Are we saying crisp dollar bills, etc?

What is the measurement of success from the perspective of what are we saying is a measurable result from the spell. Notice I'm saying two measurements. Success versus Measurable result.

So in order to say that 20% increased possibility of change, this experiment needs to account for way more about that individual. Right? It needs to account for money streams, activities, and general business. We have to establish the baseline before we can establish a 20% success goal. And that is with some predicting going on. Predicting how a personal will act, predicting how over time this work is going, etc.

These are all kinda normal for things like studies dealing with Health, you need to call the people around them and get feedback (at least in health studies because the person you're observing is not necessarily objective).

At scale, I have a hard time believing given what I said in that previous post and this one, that we will be able to achieve measurable and most importantly for any experiment, repeatable experiment conditions. Because it's not just enough to do it once, for it to become a scientific confirmation, it needs to be repeatable.

It's the rising to the nature of something that can go through the scientific rigor required. Maybe I'm pessimistic here - but based on my personal experimentation, spells tend not to lead into exact quantifiable structures that make it easy to measure. And i haven't found a perfect spell that all people from all kinds of life conditions would be able to cast, either. And I do mean, all people.

This is a large experiment, and has a considerable number of factors that could all play into the outcomes predicted by that experiment. Which are all vectors in which the scientific community can then throw that experiment away. Too many xyz. Not enough abc.

And I feel that this would be the attitude towards this kind of experiment proving that spells are 'real', hard levels of rigor.

Now again, maybe I'm being pessimistic and detail orientated experiments would not be required to provide or justify scientific opinion. But frankly, reading a few of the scientific papers I have, and reading some of the counter arguments on those papers, I feel that people get really pedantic about even the smallest things. But maybe I'm just reading the really sparking ones. It's possible!! Confirmation Bias gets us all.

Yeah, we need a little cobblah cute chaos in the world right now.

But then we gotta think about the complexities of what ethical arrangements people have around 25 dollars and where it came from. Is it safe to say if you get a paycheck every week, that, that is a success? Is it if someone bought you your drink from the Gas station? Is it if someone gave you a discount that saved 25 dollars? What if you found 30 dollars on the side of the road? It's really weird to think about this from that perspective of measuring success in spellwork, and it's a struggle that all spell casters have I think.

-stares directly into the camera- And notice I specifically used BAKING where people are like "the science though!!"

-camera zooms in- that's why right

-mega zoom into eyes- that's why... nailed it always had perfect cakes no matter which contestant was doing it.

Now we could also talk about the lulz of the show (time, education, etc). But the point is the same in my mind. You want random people together, all baking a cake, some cakes fail just for mysterious reasons. Like turning on the oven too early or too late. Or the oven isn't temp'd correctly.

But this example is so tired and I tire of giving it. It's not how I view spellwork.